She walked away from the Montreal games with three gold medals, one silver, and one bronze.
“If it was perfect, then I deserved it,” she once toldSports Illustratedof her perfect score.
In the decades that have passed since then, life has taken her on numerous twists and turns.
This included restrictions being imposed on her travel.
Restricted travel wasn’t the only fallout.
For a teenage girl on the cusp of womanhood, the experience was beyond stifling.
“It was another world.”
Meanwhile, she became embroiled in controversy when Soviet gymnast Yelena Davydova beat her in the all-round competition.
The judges deliberated for nearly a half-hour before ultimately denying Comaneci a third gold medal in Moscow.
“When she couldn’t travel to Seoul, she started planning to defect.”
She then flew to New York City, where she was granted refugee status.
Her new life had begun.
After a brief trial, he and his wife were summarily executed.
Meanwhile, Comaneci settled into her new life in the West.
In 1996, she and Conner got married, with the wedding taking place in her no-longer-communist homeland.
“The world is open today.
But it wasn’t always that way,” she toldThe Oklahomanafter taking her oath and becoming an American.
“I come from a wonderful country with wonderful people,” she said.
“But we were living with a system telling us how to live.”
“What a country.”
““I think very few people can say that, having families in two great places.”
The couple’s businesses involved regular travel to Europe, which allowed Comaneci to make regular stops in Romania.
My family and all my friends are there,” she told the Times.
Now it is free.
People go in and invest, build, bring up the country.
In July 2006, the couple welcomed a son, Dylan.
“I’m not a dreamer for, you know, I want to go to the moon someday.
I accomplished something when I was young which was much more than I expected to,” Comaneci said.
“My results were much bigger than I ever dreamed about it.”
“Kids doing art at Nadia Comaneci Clinic in Bucharest,” she captioned the photo.
Sadly, it was not a positive experience.
AsEntertainment Weeklypointed out, the legendary gymnast received little screen time before being unceremoniously fired.
“I couldn’t do that.
So, I got kicked out.”
Speaking withOK!, Comaneci confirmed that she wasn’t presented with much to do before her firing.
“The only task I was given to do was to pick the music,” she said.
There was, however, another “celebreality” show that she was eager to take a crack at.
“I would love to be in ‘Dancing with the Stars,'” she told SI.
Comaneci, however, never did compete on “DWTS.”
“She’s this generation’s modern idol right now.”
She offered even higher praise to Biles in a subsequent interview withOlympics.com.
“She’s the gymnast, slash athlete, of this generation,” Comaneci declared.
“There was no expectation,” she toldOlypmics.com.
“I call it the Nadia touch,” she explained.
It was my personal touch."
Looking back at Montreal, Comaneci admitted that the magnitude of what she’d accomplished didn’t immediately register.
“So, it didn’t sink in with me until we got home,” she recalled.
